Breaking Barriers

by Bob Dattolo

  “How did you do that?” He touched my shoulder lightly.

  “No clue? Straight-up no clue. At all. I’m hoping I find out with my birthday next weekend. I plan on spending it with my mom since it won’t be forbidden.”

  His face screwed up, “Forbidden? Why would it be forbidden to spend time with your mom?”

  Rachel looked back over the seat at him, “Her mom? That woman back there? That’s Rasphael. The fey? She’s adopting Ceri.”

  He fell back against the seat and stared up at us, “Are you kidding me?”

  “Nope. That was her.” His sister answered.

  I expected him to freak out, but instead when he screamed, he hit the seat, “You didn’t tell me?! I want her autograph!”

  He spent the next ten minutes lamenting his loss. I finally turned back to him, “Did you know they were going to turn you?”

  His diatribe petered to a stop as he trembled just a little. “Sort of? But not really? I mean, they pretty much told me they were, but I didn’t totally believe them. And, I don’t know, I thought if it happened it wouldn’t have been so…bad, I guess.”

  Yeah, bad. Can you imagine the kind of hazing that goes on in a vampire gang? He’s had more dick in the past few days than I think I’ve ever heard of before. And more beatings. “How’re you handling things now? Do you feel like you’re gonna go off the deep end and slaughter people?”

  His face turned serious. Far more serious than it had been before that. “I’m not sure? I mean…I really want to. Seeing what you two did back there? I wish I’d been more aware and able to take part. Not that I could have, I guess. Until you killed everyone, I felt like I was locked into not touching them and fighting for them.”

  Rachel snorted, “That’s because you were. You were their little bitch and you’d have fought us just like they did if you were even able to fight at all.”

  “What? I never would have fought you!” He looked so indignant.

  Rachel stared over the seat at him, “Yeah, you would have. A vampire leader can own the people below them. It’s why we have to watch out for people stronger than us. Like with what they did to you before you got changed? Fucking you?” He blushed a little at that, “Stronger vampires are sons of bitches from what I’ve seen. I told Mom about a little of it when we showed up to find out what was going on. She didn’t get why it’s rape, but not quite the same.” She waited a minute, “You don’t feel right now like you would have a few days ago, right? Knowing that they fucked you?”

  He sat back against the chair, “Huh, yeah, no. Why is that?”

  “It’s just how we are. You’re accepting things a little easier than I did, although you haven’t seen everything yet. I accepted some things, but not others.”

  “What other things?”

  “Like killing people? It’s really rare for a vampire to get to my age, which isn’t even a year old, and not have killed people. First feeds. Enemies. People that annoy them. Whatever. I fought tooth and nail not to kill anyone. Until tonight.”

  He frowned, “Who did you kill tonight? You make it sound like it’s more than just those gangs?”

  I caught his eye in the mirror, “She totally slaughtered a hyena shifter gang while we wandered around looking for you.”

  He raised his hand for a fist bump, and she finally gave it, “All right! Good for you!”

  She scowled, “You’re not supposed to congratulate me on killing people!”

  He frowned again, “Huh, okay, yeah, you’re right. I shouldn’t be okay with that, but I am? Why is that?”

  She groaned, “You’re changing. Or, you’re already changed, but your thoughts are changing. You’re going to have to feed when we get home. Do not feed from Mom, Dad, or Mindy. Especially not for first feedings. If you ask well enough, maybe Ceri will let you feed. She’s crazy strong and we can feed from her pretty frequently. You can’t do that with norms without killing them. Mages are almost the same. Shifters are more often. Ceri’s like every day. Multiple times a day. She heals like no one I’ve ever even heard of.”

  “Umm, okay? What else?”

  She waved at herself, “The whole killing thing? As much as I didn’t want to kill someone, it’s not because I didn’t want to kill someone. That’s already changing for you. And your sex drive? Were you horny before?”

  He frowned, “You’re not supposed to ask your brother about that!”

  He stared at me as I laughed, “Please. If you come to school, I can guarantee that you’ll see each other having sex. Probably within the first week. Not only that, but you won’t really care. We had that little talk with your parents. They thought she’d be freaked out about them having sex, but she already knew that they had been. She could smell it. This morning we could tell that they had slept together and had sex between the three of them, and then Mindy and your dad came in and we could tell they’d just come back from a bit of anal in the barn. They seriously thought she was going to freak. She doesn’t care. As much as I think I should care, I don’t. Had they pulled your dad’s dick out and started sucking it together, we wouldn’t even have batted an eye. Well, more her than me. I’d have batted it, but not left or even bothered looking away.”

  Rachel patted her brother’s hand, “We’re dead serious. Shifter guys can get hard like six to eight times if not more. The last vampire I was with got it up 17 times. He’d have broken me open if I were human. The fewest times with a vampire was a dozen. So yeah, get ready to have hard-ons that are going out of style. Just, listen to me on this, if you come to school and you begin trying to force people? You’re my brother, but Ceri will come down on you like a ton of bricks. I’ll be there to pick up the pieces. I’m far stronger than you are, and I’ll make my rules stick if I have to.”

  She caught my glance, “What?”

  “Umm, I think you should pull him into you to begin with. Get him tied in with you and it’ll give him a tiny bit of protection and you’ll feel better about him not going off the deep end.”

  Her eyes lit up, “Huh, that’s probably a good idea.”

  “What? What do you mean by that?”

  “It means I should pull you into my family, so to speak.”

  He laughed, “Duh, I’m your brother? We’re already family!”

  “No. My vampire family. Normally I’d be too weak for that, but I’m not any longer. If I pull you in we’ll be like the nucleus of a larger family. It gives us a connection, sort of like with a wolf Pack.”

  He frowned and fell silent, “What would I need to do?”

  She smiled wide, “Nothing at all. Let’s try this…”

  They were connected before we pulled through the massive gate. The sun had come up on our trek back, but it wasn’t too high in the air. Thank God my spell was working its miracle, because we’d have hit a tree before now otherwise.

  We crept into the house so that we didn’t wake anyone, but ended up finding the three adults in the kitchen. Once I saw them, I sort of expected them to be mid sex or something, but they weren’t. They were still in their PJs, with their dad having a pretty decent build, and the two women looking adorable in nearly matching baby doll short sets.

  “Mom? Dad? Mindy? We’re back.” The three adults screamed at the surprise voice from Rachel, and her mom recovered first.

  “Oh my God! You found him!” She ran across the space and grabbed Kevin into a hug, squeezing him tight. He put his arms around her and I had to grab them before he did some damage.

  “Whoa there, Kev, ease up or you’ll break her!”

  Marcie pulled away and looked at my hand on his arm before tears started, “My poor baby…they…”

  He looked down and nodded, “Yeah. They turned me yesterday, after they…ummm…” he looked over at his sister, “Why do I want to blurt out what they did to me?”

  She shrugged, “Because you don’t care? Or, you do, but you don’t have the same connection to it that you think you should have.” The adults were looking at her, so she waved
at him, “They started hazing him a few days ago. Beatings and rapes pretty much constantly. They were raping him when we got attacked.”

  I snorted, getting my own attention, “Hell, not that I could see when I came to, but they were beating Rachel nonstop for a bit before they started raping.”

  “You couldn’t see? Why couldn’t you see?” Mindy asked.

  Rachel started laughing, surprising them again, “She couldn’t see because they killed her. I’m not even exaggerating. She was dead. For hours. The things they did to her…no words. Then the other gang showed up and one of their guys had a thing for dead people? So, yeah…”

  I giggled, “I wasn’t too happy with possibly being dead and having some guy in my ass, so I pushed to get back. Then we killed them.”

  Mindy fell into Marcie, “You killed them who?”

  Kevin waved around, “Them all of them. The entire gang. Both gangs.”

  “What? You killed that many people?” Marcie asked.

  “Ceri killed more than I did, but yeah. Oh, I also killed a hyena gang earlier in the day. They’re both being looked at like challenges, though.”

  I patted her on the back, “I’m proud of you for not freaking out about that.”

  “Thank you. I can see that it’s not that big of a deal now.”

  I raised my hand a little, “Not to overshare, but Kevin joined Rachel’s family, so to speak. If he goes to school with us, she’ll be able to control him so that he doesn’t turn into a prick.”

  As you can imagine, that started an avalanche of discussions that were put on hold when they both took turns feeding on me. Then the conversations continued again, just with freaked out parental units looking between the three of us. It didn’t help that I came like a banshee from both sets of bites.

  Chapter 24

  School was exactly the same as before when we arrived mid-day. It took about a half hour to fill everyone in on what happened, and they were ecstatic to find out that our friend is more of a vampire right now. They were very happy to find out that she’s not going to challenge Tom for leadership of our dozenal. Not that it’d be a challenge. Heck, Armand would be more of a challenge when it comes right down to it. Magic is a heck of a trump card.

  Speaking of? The protective thing that I did on her charm to make her harder to hurt? Yeah, they totally tried cutting the shit out of her and failed. Miserably. Knives would cut, but it was really hard to do it. Even their talons didn’t get through her skin normally. That’s too funny.

  I lucked into getting a ride to the store and I bought a bunch of rings before heading back to school. My room was already midway through a veritable orgy, so I slipped into the mix, finding everyone from Lacie’s dozenal down with us. It was more fun than I would have expected, and I got a lot of kudos for our paint job.

  After that I let Steph fall asleep before sliding out and settling down with the rings and going to town for a bit. It took a few hours, but I was left with two rings that were even more powerful than the ridiculous magical multiplier rings I’ve been wearing. That allowed me to wipe out a ton of the others, storing them for future use, while keeping what is probably billions of dollars in rings with super powerful spells on them. I protected the heck out of them again and locked them away in what I hope is a safe drawer that only me or Mom should be able to get into. I hope.

  That left me with some time, so I slipped out of my room to the empty lounge and opened a small portal to Mom. At first I thought she might be asleep because the room’s a bit dark. Then I picked up movement and thought that she might be having sex or masturbating. It wasn’t until I caught a muffled groan that I realized she was being attacked.

  Crashing through the portal, I let the magic drop as the blackness inside of me swept up and filled me, making my sight turn crystal clear as I roared, power rocketing out of me as I demanded light in the room.

  I thought I failed to cast the spell, but then I realized that there’s just something huge and black in the room that’s absorbing light.

  Something huge and black that’s hurting my Mom, while also trying to get away from me.

  I don’t fucking think so!

  More magic rocketed out of me and the room began to swirl as power gathered around me as I stalked for her bed, feeling like an ice breaker heading through the ice fields. The blackness around me gave way in fits and starts as I felt it shudder from my touch and the touch of my magic.

  It doesn’t seem to like my magic much.

  It’ll just loooove this, then.

  Whatever is in the room is sort of nebulous, like a thick haze, but it seems to be a very real thing even though it’s like a fog. That just means I can’t touch it myself.

  But my magic can.

  The swirling maelstrom of magic around me blazed out to the edges of the room and then sent out sheets that connected to the next piece. And then the next. And then the next. Creating a solid shield around the room.

  Holding everything in.

  Then it began to compress.

  On the fun side of things, it also created a little barrier around Mom, separating her from the smothering soon to be dead fuckhead that I can now hear screaming as my powers pull inward, forcing it towards me.

  The first real touch of the fog against me felt like finest gossamer that sent a spike of cold through my body that headed right for my groin, making me moan with pleasure. That just made me compress harder. Faster.

  The blackness inside of me loved the shit out of this, and I felt like I was firing on all cylinders plus some borrowed from others as more magic flowed out and added to the collapsing walls around me, pushing harder and harder against the fighting monster trying to keep every bit of itself away from me.

  Soon enough, it couldn’t stop from touching me, but it seemed to thin out as it put everything into bulking up against the edges and pushing back as hard as it could. It forced my collapsing walls to stop, and my muscles trembled with the fight as I fed more and more magic into it before I began to laugh uproariously as I remembered something.

  Four shiny rings nestled in my hand as I pulled them from my pocket. My two original rings at 1,000 percent and then two brand new rings at 10,000 percent. I slipped them on, not pulling from them just yet as I looked around me, moving in a circle slowly.

  I swear the room trembled with the screaming that is nearly beyond human hearing as the faint, thin tendrils of fog beast touched me and seemingly died. That made me laugh more as I held up my hands, “Hey, fuckhead, you decided to come in here and touch the woman that has agreed to be my mom? I don’t fucking think so!”

  My power grew exponentially as the rings kicked in, and I adjusted the collapsing walls. Instead of bringing it all in as a circle, I created a longer hallway, sort of, that just so happened to have the exact same shape as my body. Which means that as I walk forward, I’ll be walking directly into the soon to be dead black fog.

  It didn’t take it long to realize what I was doing, because the screaming got exponentially worse before I’d even taken my first full step. Then it decided to attack, sending rays of something at me that took chunks out of my body. I didn’t stop, laughing even more as I pushed into it, loving the feeling of it dying at my touch. Loving it. I came hard as I leaned forward and inhaled, sucking at the fog and feeling an influx of power that filled my center. That Grand Canyon sized hole inside of me where magic coiled and moved? Yeah, yeah, it’s a happy camper as I felt magic rock into me like a space shuttle taking off. That made me suck harder, laughing in between inhalations, before I smiled again. I knew it was an evil smile even as it happened. But I didn’t care.

  I absorbed blood through those cuts on my skin and my actual skin? I think I need something like that!

  My clothes fell to the floor as I concentrated, and cuts appeared all across my body as my magic went to work. Then I really pulled at the blackness around me, getting a higher pitched scream as my body seemed to create an actual suction that pulled the attacker in at me. Feeli
ng it slide into me felt amazing. Beyond words. I came and came again as I pushed my way through the greatly reduced fog, finally sighing in sorrow when I reached the end of the little me-shaped hallway and bumped into my shield.

  When I dropped it, I found Mom at the side of her bed looking far worse for wear. She’s healing quickly, but the thing did a number on her, and she’s busted up. Her jaw looks shattered, her left eye is either missing or destroyed utterly. I think her ribs on one side are collapsed. Her left arm is shattered in a few places.

  Even with that, she’s standing and holding a gorgeous sword, as if ready for battle.

  Magic coursed around me again and I cast it out, letting the room fill with tendrils of light and the twinkling sound of tiny bells as my magic went to work, healing the ancient fey. She moaned as the magic stopped, and then gave me a brief bow before nodding, “Thank you. That’s quite fortuitous timing. What made you check in on me?”

  I shrugged and held up my hand, showing her the four rings, “Well, you know, I came up with payment for you for your offer to take me in and be my mother. Since I would literally cut off my own legs and give up magic and whatever I’m growing into to be with you, I decided that a priceless ring is just about the start of my payment to you. This is my down payment on you becoming my mom on my birthday.”

  Her smile started to grow slowly, “I…see. So by giving it to me as payment for my future action, you’re not stating that you’re my daughter at the moment.”

  “Of course not! That would be silly. I’m not allowed to be your daughter until my birthday. This is just partial payment.”

  She laughed as I slipped the rings off, “In light of that, I think I can accept.”

  I held up the two rings as I stepped closer, “Then, in that case, here are two rings I made for you as partial payment for what you’re willing to do for me.”

  She giggled as I slid them onto her fingers. “Oh my…these are beautiful.”